Sierra Club changes on gas company contributions

Environmentalists have been rocked by news that the Sierra Club has taken $26 million from natural gas producer Chesapeake Energy starting in 2007 and ending in 2010, a contribution the club’s director says now will be ended.

The Sierra Club has quit taking contributions from natural gas producer Chesapeake Energy as the debate over hydraulic fracturing begins to overtake the Club’s original position that natural gas would be a cleaner alternative to coal.

In a blog post Thursday, Sierra Club executive director Mike Brune said the environmental organization has stopped taking what has been $26 million in contributions from Chesapeake since 2005.

“In 2010, soon after I became the organization’s executive director, I learned that beginning in 2007 the Sierra Club had received more than $26 million from individuals or subsidiaries of Chesapeake Energy, one of the country’s largest natural gas companies, Brune wrote.

“At the same time I learned about the donation, we at the Club were also hearing from scientists and from local Club chapters about the risks that natural gas drilling posed to our air, water, climate, and people in their communities. We cannot accept money from an industry we need to change.”

The Sierra Club’s contributions generally are confidential and the involvement of Chesapeake was not known until Time Magazine broke the story Thursday in a blog post.

The Sierra Club’s dilemma has come about because of the rising prominence of the arguments over hydraulic fracturing, the practice of using high-pressure injections of water and sand into underground shale rock formations to enable natural gas drilling.

Environmentalists have questioned the practice, saying it could threaten groundwater supplies.

Natural gas production from shale fields has boomed in recent years, drawing attention all the way to President Obama’s recent State of the Union message where he heralded the new era of plentiful natural gas as an important energy resource for the U.S.

Brune said the Sierra Club originally supported natural gas drilling because natural gas is a cleaner burning fuel than coal.

“In the fall of 2005, Sierra Club staff and volunteer leaders agreed to make the enormous challenge of climate disruption the Club’s highest priority,” Brune said. “By that time, we had already begun to have great success with our Beyond Coal campaign, which had started in 2002, and which had already stopped the construction of several dozen new coal-fired power plants.”

The profusion of natural gas supplies has caused a number of electric utilities to switch away from coal as a fuel for new generators. But it has also posed a threat to wind energy expansion as well as the development of new-generation of biofuels.

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